1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing control device, a record medium storing thereon a computer-readable program and a printing system for controlling a stencil printing machine, having a plurality of exchangeable printing drums, wherein plural stencil sheets formed on the basis of image data are mounted on the respective printing drums with which a print sheet is held in press contact to achieve stencil printing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, it has heretofore been proposed to employ a stencil printing machine which includes a plurality of printing drums which are allocated with different ink colors to enable a single color printing or a multi-color printing.
In such a stencil printing machine, for example, first and second printing drums and a press drum are located for free rotational movement and the first and second printing drums are arranged so as to assume respective positions angled at 90 degrees with respect to a central angle of the press drum in the vicinities of an outer circumferential periphery of the press drum.
With such a structure, when implementing a stencil printing operation, leading edges of perforated stencil sheets formed on the basis of image (print) data for first and second ink colors are initially clamped with stencil clamping segments of the first and second printing drums, respectively, with the perforated stencil sheet traveling between the first printing drum and the press drum along the outer circumferential periphery of the press drum for thereby allowing printing ink with the first color to be transferred to the print sheet through an perforated area of the stencil sheet.
Upon transfer of printing ink with the first color, the print sheet is then transferred between the second printing drum and the press drum to pass (execute printing operation) between the second printing drum and the press drum for allowing printing ink with the second color to be transferred to the print sheet in the same principle as discussed above. Subsequently, a sheet discharge section discharges the print sheet, on which desired printing image data is reproduced, to a given paper receiving position to complete the multi-color printing operation.
By the way, although the aforementioned stencil printing machine is known, extensive research and development work has not been conducted for a printer driver which enables control for the stencil printing machine. That is, with such a prior art printer driver, there have been many instances wherein a difficulty is encountered in designating ink colors for the printing drums.
In the printer driver for controlling the prior art stencil printing machine, there are some instances wherein in case of using four kinds of ink, in a four-color printing operation, involving for example C (cyan), M (magenta), Y (yellow) and K (black), a printing command is issued by allocating yellow, cyan, magenta and black to first, second, third and fourth printing drums, respectively, and wherein in case of a two-color printing mode, a printing command is issued by allocating red and black colors to first and second printing drums, respectively. In both of these cases, the stencil printing machine does not encounter confusion even in the absence of ink color information, allocated for respective printing drums, in data transmitted from the printer driver.
However, in the stencil printing machines of the type using cartridge type printing drums which are exchangeable for respective ink colors, there are some possibilities wherein the ink color of the printing drum is altered every time the printing operation is performed. When it is possible to alter the ink color for the printing drum, there are a great number of combinations of ink colors to be required in dependence on the number of the printing drums. In the prior art stencil printing machine for two-color printing, for example, when the user has five exchangeable printing drums, it is considered that there are twenty kinds of combinations.
In case of implementing the ink color management for such a great number of ink-color combinations relying on user""s memory, the printing operation requires a troublesome work, causing undesirable error in combination of the print colors and requiring much time in operations. In such a prior art stencil printing machine, as the number of internal printing drums and the number of the printing drums held for different ink colors increases, the problems become more and more serious.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a printing control device, a record medium storing thereon a computer-readable program and a printing system for controlling a stencil printing machine, employing plural exchangeable printing drums, which is able to provide an ease of ink-color management and leads to a significant improvement in the total handling characteristics, such as maneuverability, readiness and maintainability.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a printing control device for controlling a stencil printing machine, having a plurality of exchangeable printing drums, wherein respective printing drums are mounted with respective perforated stencil sheets which are formed on the basis of image data, and a print sheet is held in press contact with the plural printing drums to perform a stencil printing process, which comprises a registering section for registering printing ink colors to be used for the printing process using the respective printing drums and storing useable ink color information, a designating section for producing ink-color designating information to designate a correlated relationship between the useable ink color information indicative of the ink colors registered by the registering section when executing the printing process using the respective printing drums, and a display data producing section for producing display data to display contents of the ink-color designating information produced by the designating section for the respective printing drums.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer-readable record medium having stored thereon a program for controlling a stencil printing machine, having a plurality of exchangeable printing drums, wherein respective printing drums are mounted with respective perforated stencil sheets which are formed on the basis of image data, and a print sheet is held in press contact with the plural printing drums to perform a stencil printing process, which comprises a registering section for registering printing ink colors to be used for the printing process using the respective printing drums and storing useable ink color information, a designating section for producing ink-color designating information to designate a correlated relationship between the useable ink color information indicative of the ink colors registered by the registering section when executing the printing process using the respective printing drums, and a display data producing section for producing display data to display contents of the ink-color designating information produced by the designating section for the respective printing drums.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a printing system which comprises a stencil printing machine, including a plurality of exchangeable printing drums, wherein respective printing drums are mounted with respective perforated stencil sheets which are formed on the basis of image data, and a print sheet is held in press contact with the plural printing drums to perform a stencil printing process, and a printing control device including a transmitting section connected to the stencil printing machine for transmitting print data thereto via a communication network, a registering section for registering printing ink colors to be used for printing with the respective printing drums and storing useable ink color information, a designating section for producing ink-color designating information to designate a correlated relationship between the useable ink color information indicative of the ink colors registered by the registering section when executing the printing process using the respective printing drums, and a display data producing section for producing display data to display contents of the ink-color designating information produced by the designating section for the respective printing drums.
An important feature of the present invention concerns the readiness of the ink-color management which is executed in the stencil printing machine, having a plurality of exchangeable printing drums, wherein the printing ink colors, to be used for printing with the respective printing drums, are registered and the useable ink color information is registered, and wherein ink-color designating information, which designates correlated relationship between the ink-color information, indicative of the printing ink color to be used for printing with the respective printing drums, and the respective printing drums, is produced to be provided to the user.